There Ought to be a Law Against That! – Sunday, June 28, 1942
In protest of something of which we disapprove, we often hear the offhand comment: “There ought to be a law against that!” As a matter of fact, somewhere or other in the world, there is a law against almost everything. But multiplicity of laws does not make men good or society safe.
The ten commandments gave us a pretty good start, except that no one seems to be able to enforce them or to induce any great number of people to observe them. And so, when you can’t enforce a few laws, the popular thing to do, it seems, is to make many, with the result that we have more laws than the world has ever known—and also more lawlessness! Perhaps there is a correlation between these two facts. From the man whose offense involves nothing worse than keeping a book too long out of the library, right down to the man who devastates and steals another man’s country, who destroys another’s way of life, we have observed and are observing a world-wide siege of lawlessness which has no parallel of record.
Fortunately, however, it is impossible for any man to disregard all law, because there are higher laws that are always operative which cannot be set aside or defied. And, in fact, whenever a man thinks he is breaking a law and getting away with it, he is in reality merely setting in motion other laws, which exact full satisfaction in some form or other, sometimes without immediate apparent effect, but always with certain unavoidable consequences.
For “there is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated-and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21) Conversely, if a man chooses to act contrary to counsel and commandment, that law which brings retribution to the wrongdoer is invoked. And so operates the law which defies breaking, which governs the lives of men, which brings penalty where it is deserved and reward where it is earned. Call it what you will—the law of cause and effect, the law of retribution, the law of compensation—it is all these and more—it is eternal law, the law of God, which assures us that all things in life have their consequences, now and forevermore, and this law none may break and none may escape.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, June 28, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the Nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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June 28, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,671